


You Messed With the Wrong Agent

by agentx13



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America (Comics), Marvel (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Mistaken Identity (sort of), Traps, accidentally living your friend's life, regretting it so much, seeing what they see, sharon carter month
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28050303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentx13/pseuds/agentx13
Summary: When Steve goes missing, Sharon can't stay home and wait for someone else to find him. But when her rescue plan goes awry, it's clear the kidnappers were expecting someone else.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Matt Murdock & Natasha Romanov, Sharon Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19
Collections: Sharon Carter Month





	You Messed With the Wrong Agent

No one is worried in the first hour, or the second, even the tenth. He’s Captain America, wherever he is, he should be fine. He’s taken on gods, he’s carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. He’s gone back in time and found his way home again. Whatever’s going on, he’s got it.

Sharon knows she doesn’t need to worry, but that doesn’t stop her from calling around to try and track him down when twelve hours have passed. She can overlook two hours, get nervous at ten, but twelve is the cutoff.

He isn’t on a mission with the Avengers. He isn’t on a mission with SHIELD. He isn’t hanging out with Bucky or Sam. Everyone agrees to wait overnight and see if he comes home by morning – everyone but Sharon. She doesn’t agree to it. She stays up most of the night. She calls all the hospitals in the area asking them to keep an eye out for him. Spends some time hacking different security feeds, tracking his movements and cursing him for using rooftops. Who does that when they don’t need to? Who?

She’s bleary-eyed when Tony calls the next morning to ask if he’s come home. She tells him he didn’t, that she doesn’t know where Steve is, and he tells her that the Avengers will look into it.

She doesn’t mind , at first. It bothers her that they’re “looking into it” instead of treating it like a full-scale mission, but for the most part it doesn’t bother her. She keeps working on things on her end. Calls them when she thinks she’s found something about his movements. This time, he was here. That time, there. She thinks it’s helpful.

By three in the afternoon, she realizes they consider it a distraction. They consider _her_ to be the distracting girlfriend. They know she can do more than wait at home. They know it. But they don’t trust her judgment right now. They would never say it like that, of course. They might say things like, “You’re too close to this, Sharon” or “You need sleep, Sharon,” or “We’ve got this taken care of, Sharon, why don’t you rest while you wait for him to come home?”

Like hell she will.

She hacks into SHIELD. She hacks into the Avengers. Steve being gone this long isn’t normal. He needs help, and no one will let her help. Not that she needs their permission.

By three in the morning, she’s beaten the crap out of several of Steve’s rogues trying to track him down. Crossbones will think twice the next time he crosses her path, that’s for sure. She hadn’t been so inordinately angry last time they’d met. None of his rogues have ever gotten beatdowns like this from her before, and the longer Steve is away, the more brutal she gets. But now she knows: This is a new villain, or a terrible accident.

She gives up on the higher-up rogues and heads to dive bars. By six, her knuckles are sore, but she has a lead on a new player, some psychological manipulator. By nine in the morning, the sun stings her eyes and her knuckles are bleeding, but she has an address.

She could give the Avengers a call, but they’d sideline her, and she’s in no mood to be sidelined. She handled the Trapster. She handled Zemo. She handled Machinesmith and Red Skull. She can handle this asshole.

There’s a derelict property in Brooklyn. She surveys the place for a couple hours from the rooftop across the street, takes a catnap and eats what’s supposed to be a slice of pizza (come on, Luigi’s, you’re better than this) then drinks several coffees.

There’s no one coming in or out of the house, but she doesn’t doubt her intel. Everyone she’d confronted that night had been eager to send her to someone else. The key word being someone _else_. The fool who’d sent her here wouldn’t want her going back to him disappointed.

Dusk falls, and she continues to wait while she stretches and warms up. She’s already wearing her unofficial uniform, its surface perfect for flaking off the dried blood she hadn’t noticed earlier.

She creeps downward, then infiltrates the building. It’s too easy, she thinks. It’s all too easy. There should be goons. There should be more obvious security.

But she finds Steve with little difficulty, where he’s seemingly asleep on a hospital bed with a feeding tube and an IV line and some sort of small box blinking away beside his head. There are no windows here, only bright white lights overhead that give the place a sterile, stark feeling.

The sense that this is some sort of hospital isn’t helped by the other industrial beds in the room, and Sharon’s wondering who they’re meant for when she hears a voice say, “This will have to do.”

* * *

“Remember when I saved you from that guy who kidnapped you?” she asks Steve over breakfast. They’re sitting in a little cafe in Paris, the orange leaves flittering past in a sort of symphony, and they have time between missions, and she is content. Mostly.

“Which time?”

“Any time.”

He takes a bite of his danish and nods, his cheeks rounded out by the food.

She sets her eyes on what could, potentially, complete her contentment. “I can’t believe that I rescued you and you still won’t share your biscotti with me.”

He moved the biscotti closer to his chest. “You haven’t earned this biscotti, Nat. Get your own.”

Wait, what?

“ _Nat?_ ”

* * *

“Remember when I saved you from that guy who kidnapped you?” They’re in the middle of an alien invasion. The Avengers are passing by to and fro and varying speeds. She doesn’t pay them any more mind than making sure they don’t come to harm while she continues to take out threats.

“Let it go!” Steve shouts back, catching the shield and slinging it away again.

She laughs and tosses aside her gun as she runs out of bullets. She lifts her arm, aims her gauntlets, and-

Wait.

She lowers them, looking at the gold-covered explosives strapped to her wrists. The black uniform. The red hair that dances in her vision when the wind gusts. “These aren’t mine.”

* * *

“Remember when I saved you from that guy who kidnapped you?”

Bucky looks down at her, naked underneath the sheet. On top of her. And she’s also naked?

Her eyes widen. Yes. She and Bucky Barnes are both naked together.

_Nooooooooooooope._

* * *

“Remember when I saved you from that guy who kidnapped you?”

Logan blows out cigar smoke in little circles. That’s new. Logan. Not the smoke circles. Still, it’s better than a naked Bucky. “Don’t recall that happening.”

“I don’t, either,” Sharon says. “Something’s wrong.”

Before he can answer, the scene changes.

* * *

“Remember when I saved you from that guy who kidnapped you?”

The Red Guardian smiles fondly at her.

“I don’t even fucking _know_ you,” Sharon says. She raises her middle finger. Natasha has always made fun of her Russian, but Sharon is fairly certain Natasha’s ex can translate her gesture just fine. “But I don’t like you.”

The scene changes again.

* * *

“Remember when I sa-” She forces herself to stop. No. No, no, no.

Matt Murdoch looks toward her, expectant. 

Sharon drops in a chair. “I’m just going to hang out for a minute.”

“Whatever you need, Nat.” He sounds confused, but he goes along with it.

That’s the think about Matt Murdoch. She doesn’t have much to do with him – partly because Steve sometimes fights with him, and Sharon is usually with SHIELD, and Murdoch can harp rather too legally about human rights violations sometimes, but at the end of the day, Murdoch is good at giving people space. Or maybe he’d listening to her vitals, seeing if can tell him what’s going on. But he won’t press her. If he says he’ll give her - _Nat_ \- a moment, he’ll at least go along with it.

She waits a moment, then touches the back of her neck. Nothing.

But she knows this isn’t real. She thinks of all the people she knows who could make her think this is real when it isn’t. Someone who would design some sort of program to trap Natasha in a fantasy world – to confuse _her_ with Natasha.

No. What had that voice said? _This will have to do._

“Holy crap,” she announces, ignoring how Matt turns to look at her. Instead of telling him how offended she is that no one thought to trap _her_ with Steve, she just waves a hand at him. “You’re not even real, Murdoch.”

Matt’s law office goes out of focus, like a mirage, or an old television switching channels.

She sits upright in alarm, grabbing onto a chair that’s no longer there.

* * *

“Remember when I-” She blinks at Steve.

“When you,” he prods.

She shrugs. Saying the obvious had gotten her reset before. “Never mind. I just remembered an errand. Catch up later?”

“Sure,” he says, sounding faintly confused. “Your errands can’t wait until after the mission?”

“Nope. Lady stuff.”

“Oh,” he says, too quickly. “Right. Lady- right. Yeah. We’ll catch up later. See- see you.”

Does Steve almost walk into a wall when _she_ talks about lady stuff? Or is it just with Natasha?

On the other hand, judging by how Steve is pretending everything’s fine so hard that he almost falls in a pothole, he might not be used to Natasha talking to him about lady stuff. She’ll have to remember to use that in the future. She and Natasha can mess with him together.

She walks off in the opposite direction, deep in thought. Whoever’s monitoring this seems capable of tracking her spoken words, maybe actions, but not her thoughts. 

With Faustus, a person needs will. But this isn’t Faustus. This is more like a computer program, something designed to make her think she succeeded in her mission. Something to lull Natasha into complacency.

One cannot escape a computer program through will alone.

At least, she doesn’t think so.

Still. She thinks about escaping this place. She thinks very, very hard about it.

And nothing happens.

Okay, so let’s try something else. But first, how closely are they monitoring her?

She takes Natasha’s gun, toying with it and weighing the odds.

The odds are bad. Also, how does Natasha wear this belt? It’s just… a weird circlet of golden circles, some of which double as pockets. Who had designed this, for God’s sake? Sharon takes a moment to poke at it and makes a face. Is it a clip on?

She shakes her head. Focus.

She lifts the gun to her temple.

* * *

“Do you remember-”

_DAMN IT._ Okay, so they’re monitoring her actions, too. 

Barton looks at her expectantly. She’s in his apartment, and he’s behind the counter in his kitchen, preparing some coffee. He’s got his shirt off, because- well, it’s unwise to wonder why Barton does some things. 

Whoever is watching her, whoever has designed this whole thing for Natasha, is obviously familiar with Natasha. _Deeply_ familiar. Familiar enough to know Natasha’s relationships.

Which begs the question, are they as familiar with Steve’s love life? Have they seen her and Steve have sex? Does part of the fantasy to keep Steve compliant include having sex with her? Did they actually write code to make Sharon naked?

Oh, crap. Had they watched her and _Bucky?_ Nothing had happened!

Oh, crap.

She looks again at Barton. No shirt. She moves around to look at the rest of him, and when he realizes what she’s doing, he moves into view, holding out his arms so she can get a better look.

“You liiiiiiiiiiiike?” he asks. He twists his hips a little, and Sharon claps a hand over her eyes.

“ _FUCK!_ ”

* * *

“Do-” She groans.

“You okay?” Steve looks at her in concern.

“Yeah,” she mutters. “Yeah. I just- I just need a minute.”

“Take your time. You’ll need time to recover. Not every day your consciousness gets switched with someone else. You’ll need time to get used to being you again.”

Was that really what they were going with?

“So that’s what’s been happening?” Her voice is groggy, unsuspecting, but inside, she is raging.

Assholes. They seriously expect her to believe that? All the mind games people have tried to play on her in the past, and they think she’s going to fall for _this?_ She got brainwashed into killing the man she loved, and they think she’s going to fall for this level of- No.

Ugh. She’s never going to get the images of naked Clint and naked Bucky out of her head.

Steve nods, looking a little too relieved. “You thought you weren’t you. Who else would Natasha Romanoff be?”

_Heavy-handed_ assholes.

“Right,” Sharon says. “That makes sense.”

He keeps watching her, and she somewhat doubts she’ll get rid of him. But that’s fine. She can’t bounce ideas off him like she usually does, but she feels better knowing he’s around. It isn’t really him, sure, but beggars can’t be choosers.

And if things _really_ go downhill, she won’t have to feel too bad about kicking his ass. She should feel worse that she thinks that, but kicking the Hydra version of Steve’s ass had felt pretty good.

Okay. So they’re monitoring her actions. She can’t try to hurt herself without a reset. They’re monitoring her words. Whenever she reveals she knows something isn’t right, it resets. 

But there are two times that don’t fit that. Bucky and Barton. Waking up to find she’d been cavorting with men she’d much rather see with their clothes very much _on._ She feels a rush of disgust at who was watching and why they had set up that fantasy, and the air around her flickers.

She stops.

Steve is watching her, still concerned. Steve who isn’t Steve.

Emotions. They can’t control _emotions._

She grins at him. He grins back. Not the grin he usually shows her, but a friendly enough one.

She takes a breath and closes her eyes. The problem with using awful emotions to overwhelm a computer program or something like it is that she’s going to have to _feel_ those emotions.

Still. She is _not_ going to live a fake life as Natasha Romanoff. She’s Sharon Carter, and she wants to live like it.

Naked Bucky. Gross. Naked Barton. Ick. The despair of Faustus having her strapped to a cot, the Skull waiting to harvest her womb for her unborn child. The immense, never-ending heartache of realizing she’d shot Steve, killed him, or so she thought. The euphoria of getting him back.

The scene resets.

* * *

She’s in a hospital bed, a man looking down at her with alarm. He reaches for a walkie-talkie, and she can feel the IV and feeding tube but knows she has to stop him, knows it’s going to hurt. She jumps from the bed, tackles him to the ground, the IV ripping out of her arm. It only takes one punch to knock him out.

She pulls the rest of the feeding tube out with grunt and a cough. Whoever did this to her is going to _suffer._

She grabs a nearby piece of cloth and wraps it tightly around her arm as she moves to Steve’s bed. She’s more careful with his IV than hers, and more careful with the feeding tube, too. Only when he’s free of those does she carefully remove the box at the base of his neck.

His eyes flicker open. “I got wine,” he greets her. He blinks some more, as if he could have sworn he’d told her that already.

“I got you out,” she tells him. “I’m guessing you don’t have the wine anymore.” She motions for him to sit up and glances toward the door. The man had tried to radio someone, and she’s not sure how much time they have. “You didn’t think about us having sex, did you?”

He sits on his own, then gets to his feet. Good. He’s mobile. He’s heavy enough she hadn’t wanted to carry him. “Um. Yes?”

She sighs. “Well, they thought I was Natasha, so I think I had sex with both Bucky and Barton. Or at least, I thought I did.”

He looks at her in horror.

“I bailed as soon as I realized they were naked,” she continues. “But those images are burned into my brain.”

He looks around for his shield and grabs it from a nearby desk. “I’m going to do that,” he vows. “Right after I repay our host.”

“Any idea who it is?”

“Not much. I only got a glimpse before.” Steve’s eyes are dark, and he is deliciously, undeniably, real.

“Wait.” She stops him and pulls him into a kiss. A minute or two later, she pulls away with a grin. “I just needed to check.”

He grins down at her. “And?”

“If you kiss Natasha like that, we’re going to have a _talk._ ”

He laughs. “No, I don’t kiss anybody but you.”

“Good answer.”

He offers her his hand, his eyes dancing, and they go to take care of business.

* * *

Hours later, they aren’t dressed to receive visitors. On the way home, he’d had the idea to stop by for wine like he’d originally planned. Once he found the bottle he’d originally bought, though, he realized he might not be able to stomach it for a while. They’d opted for stronger alcohols instead and gone home to celebrate.

So they are not dressed to receive visitors, nor are they in any condition to receive them (at least, she isn’t), when visitors arrive. Steve, with his higher alcohol tolerance and better balance, reaches the door first and opens it, careful to keep everything but his head hidden from sight.

The Avengers are on their doorstep.

“I saw you naked,” she greets Barton without thinking. She claps a hand over her mouth, and Steve motions for her to get down behind the couch. She sinks out of sight on the cushions. “Get it out of my braaaaaaaaaaaain.”

“Just came by to check on you,” Barton says, sounding awkward. “Sounds like you’re good?” He pauses. “Are you good?”

“We’re fine,” Steve says firmly.

“My braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain,” Sharon mourns from the other side of the couch.

“See anybody else naked?” This time it’s Natasha, and she sounds amused. Too amused.

Sharon pops up, leans too far to the right, then rights herself. “They thought you were me.” She focuses on enunciation. She thinks she got it.

“They thought she was you,” Steve murmurs.

“Who do you _think_ I saw?”

Tony coughs delicately. “Glad to hear everything worked out fine.”

“Right, righ,” Sharon says. “Next time he needs help? Don’t fucking ignore me!”

Steve hangs his head to hide his face.

“I found that guy!” Sharon points at the kitchen table. “And he’s heavy!”

Steve starts closing the door. “Thanks for coming by. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Maybe take a day,” Tony suggests. “You earned it.”

“ _I_ earned it,” Sharon corrects. “Metal butt.”

Natasha snorts.

“No! You don’t- you don’t- you… don’t…” She tries to make out the words and finally gives up. “ _No!_ ” She groans, thinking about the last time she thought that, and sinks back onto the couch. “Steve. You’re up.”

Steve closes the door before the situation can go further downhill. “Right. Coming.”

Sharon cackles. “Not yet, you’re not. Now come here.”

He grins and walks over. “We should do this every time we rescue each other.”

She holds her arms out to him. “We can do it anyway.”

“True. Maybe with less alcohol, though.”

She makes a doubtful sound, and it turns into a grunt as he tosses himself onto her. She kisses him, and she hopes that, like her, he has no doubt whatsoever that the two of them, right here, right now, what they have in this place, are real.


End file.
